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Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by pgrote on Thursday August 06, 2020 @05:44PM (#24075809)
>But the moves threaten to upend huge swaths of the real estate market and the half-trillion dollar market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

And?

Seriously. We either have to choose to be a market that is somewhat free or not. At this point, the government is choosing winners and losers. It is a repeat of 2008. Oh no, it is too big to fail.

Someone will come by with the investment to buy what is left. Perhaps they will run it better. Prepare better.

We're going through this with airlines and cruise companies now fighting for more money and loans from the government. Perhaps Delta grew too large to be what they are now. Maybe there are too many malls in existence. Maybe the method in which we collateralize mortgages doesn't make sense anymore.

Our economy has developed the too big to fail mindset and forgotten, largely, you can lose.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by patmcc on Thursday August 06, 2020 @05:58PM (#24075921)
>>>And?

It's a news story, there doesn't have to be any underlying editorial message. Sometimes the news is just "thing happens".

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by koolba on Thursday August 06, 2020 @06:52PM (#24076267)
For most publications that time past a long time ago. There’s a limited space so even “presenting the facts” has an editorial bias when you decide which facts you are presenting.

The extreme example of this is a political news site that dedicates its entire site to posting anything that paints its opponents or their positions in a negative light. They can all be “thing happens” stories, but the filter alone gives it an angle.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by seanmcdirmid on Thursday August 06, 2020 @10:25PM (#24077399)
The article here is not of that kind. Business publications tend to be the most report-fact-based, simply because their readers don’t make money by deluding themselves with confirmation bias.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by Wowfunhappy on Thursday August 06, 2020 @11:20PM (#24077728)
Well, you have the existence of this article as a counterpoint. :)
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by beojan on Friday August 07, 2020 @06:04AM (#24080263)
> For most publications that time past a long time ago.

The exception would be Bloomberg, or the Financial Times. Publications read for information to make decisions on.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jldugger on Thursday August 06, 2020 @11:04PM (#24077593)
>>But the moves threaten to upend huge swaths of the real estate market and the half-trillion dollar market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

>And?

And if you're a trader reading Bloomberg news, maybe factor that into your trading decisions, or something. Not every piece of news is a call for government regulation.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jader201 on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:32AM (#24078692)
Sounds like the underlying question behind the “and?” is, why is this news on HN?

As has been stated, this happens, it’s what bankruptcy is for, and is not all that shocking or worth particular notice here.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by bleuedejapan on Friday August 07, 2020 @05:18AM (#24079973)
Considering that there will be a huge amount of unused, cheap real estate, and that only tech companies seem to be holding off the crisis, it is pretty much relevant - real estate will be a huge opportunity for tech.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jtbayly on Friday August 07, 2020 @09:27AM (#24081547)
Opportunity for what? Given the increase in WFH, tech companies are also using less real estate.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jldugger on Friday August 07, 2020 @03:53PM (#24085834)
Opportunity for more datacenters? A lot of datacenters are built inside abandoned warehouses and other buildings: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/recycled-buil...

These places tend to be connected to useful infrastructure like rail lines, and at least in the US, the internet kinda borrowed rail's right of way to lay fiber. Not sure how well connected malls are; they tend to be near highways so it might have a similar advantage?

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by bleuedejapan on Saturday August 08, 2020 @02:33AM (#24089566)
Tech enabled homes, for example. Converting malls into homes, and managing building complexes using a tech stack...

If you really can't figure out one single use for cheap empty space, man, you need take a step back and just play around with your imagination a bit :)

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jtbayly on Saturday August 08, 2020 @03:19PM (#24094304)
I can think of plenty of uses of empty space. Housing is just one of them. What I didn't come up with was any need that tech companies might have. (I hadn't thought of datacenter, which another commenter mentioned, but I doubt the space opening up will be particularly useful for that.) Regardless, I've not heard of any tech companies needing huge amounts more space recently. Starting a new housing company to use this space might make sense, but I doubt any of the tech companies have any desire to become housing companies. I guess I could be wrong. If they do, I'll be removing any investments I might have with them, though.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by renewiltord on Thursday August 06, 2020 @09:27PM (#24077103)
Well, they would rightly argue that if you want to ensure market freedom, then you should let them keep their doors open and let people decide whether to attend and let people decide whether they want to work. Just free parties making decisions.

If you decide you're going to force a shutdown and result in the unemployment of millions, you're going to have to ensure they have jobs to come back to.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by rrrrrrrrrrrryan on Thursday August 06, 2020 @07:39PM (#24076556)
When corporations start buckling during sharp economic downturns, everyone's first instinct is always "let them burn."

But it's often not a choice between letting entire swaths of our economy collapse, and dumping absurd amounts of our tax dollars to prop up these poorly-run companies. We can give them loans with strings attached, force them to go through bankruptcy, wipe out the shareholders but preserve the structure of the company, bail them out but subject the industry to much greater regulatory scrutiny, etc.

Personally, I wish we had a straightforward way to bail out a company and have the U.S. government take ownership in the company until the stake can be safely unwound, or the too-big-to-fail company can be broken up. Theoretically, with a controlling stake and the corresponding board seats, you could force out the lousy management that didn't take adequate precautions as well.

It'd kind of be socialism-esque nationalization of industries with extra steps, but Japan has been doing a similar-style thing since the 90s, and I can't imagine it would be any worse than the relatively strings-free bailouts we've seen, or the collateral damage and runaway collapse that would occur from letting a monstrous chunk of the economy fail all at once.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by frandroid on Thursday August 06, 2020 @08:41PM (#24076865)
Or you know, make up for the missed opportunity of 2008/2009, where the government could have bailed out underwater homeowners so that the bailout would have trickled up to the mortgage holders, instead of pouring money into banks and letting people suffer. Thanks, Obama.

Canada's CERB and CECRA have been doing wonders to keep ordinary people either afloat or employed, trickling up to small businesses all over.

(I don't mind your plan either, but it involves more per-company hand-holding than simply giving out generous unemployment and employment-support benefits)

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by dashundchen on Thursday August 06, 2020 @10:29PM (#24077416)
Just to clarify, both TARP and Emergency Economic Stabilization Act were signed into law in October 2008 before Obama was even elected president.

Not saying he wouldn't have also signed the acts but the crisis was well underway by the time Obama was in the White House.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by mgkimsal on Thursday August 06, 2020 @10:41PM (#24077467)
obama did vote for TARP as a senator, so it's likely he would have supported it (or a variation) as president.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by jt94mf90d on Friday August 07, 2020 @02:56AM (#24079107)
The point he was making was the thanks obama doesnt make cents. Thank bush for the economic catastrophe for obama to inherit.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by bsder on Thursday August 06, 2020 @09:32PM (#24077129)
> the government could have bailed out underwater homeowners

Why reward people who gambled and lost? Bust them out.

People will either buy the houses at more reasonable prices or (more likely in this case) the banks will renegotiate more reasonable terms with the original mortgage holders because they have too much supply and no buyers.

> instead of pouring money into banks and letting people suffer. Thanks, Obama.

That wasn't possible as liquidity also died. Solvent businesses couldn't give people paychecks because the banks had no cash. You had to bail the banks.

HOWEVER, what needed to happen was that the bank investors needed to get busted out. That was where Obama went wrong.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by pgrote on Friday August 07, 2020 @09:16AM (#24081436)
>Why reward people who gambled and lost? Bust them out.

Why reward corporations and investors who gambled and lost? Bust them out.

>People will either buy the houses at more reasonable prices or (more likely in this case) the banks will renegotiate more reasonable terms with the original mortgage holders because they have too much supply and no buyers.

Other companies will buy the businesses at more reasonable prices or (more likely in this case) the banks will renegotiate more reasonable terms with the original mortgage holders because they have too much supply and no buyers.

And this was the issue with the 2008 fiasco. The government chose to save large financial institutions instead of breaking them up so the problems would be less likely to happen again. They chose to save large corporations over homeowners.

It is happening now with the pandemic response. I get the federal government wanted to dump a ton of money into the economy through PPP, but man, you cannot tell me the Catholic Church needed it. They are sitting on assets worth billions they could have sold/borrowed against to stay afloat. Same with large private educational institutions and public corporations.

The next round, and there will be a next round, will be more of the same. Carve outs will be rampant.

The USA should have looked at other countries providing direct income replacement to citizens. 70% income replacement sent to citizens and not force them through state's unemployment processes. Other countries did this and it worked.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by bsder on Friday August 07, 2020 @08:01PM (#24087742)
> Why reward corporations and investors who gambled and lost? Bust them out.

Um, exactly?

As I said, the bank investors should have gotten wiped out.

The worst part is that a bank is probably the single business type that the Federal government can actually replace on a short timescale.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by dillondoyle on Thursday August 06, 2020 @10:36PM (#24077451)
I would argue the gambler's are those buying insane billions in MBS and derivatives of derivatives of MBS, with what turns out to be totally BS ratings and a whole lot of what should have been obvious to see fraud
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by 0xy on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:38AM (#24078726)
In this case, the downturn is caused by deliberate government action. How can you call a small local cafe forced to shut by government "poorly-run"? They were literally forced out of business by legislation that prevented them from even trading.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by rrrrrrrrrrrryan on Friday August 07, 2020 @03:20PM (#24085545)
I was specifically discussing how we could better handle bailing out these too-big-to-fail corporations, not small companies, which should obviously be assisted in different ways.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by tcbawo on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:06AM (#24078545)
You could look at it from the perspective of adapt or die. But you can also look at certain industries/companies like an endangered species. Once the last rhino dies, it's gone forever. Not a totally straightforward decision.
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by nugget on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:32AM (#24078693)
I understand why we’d want to save the airlines (for instance) from extinction, but why bail out the current equity holders as opposed to an orderly, Government-backed restructuring in bankruptcy court?
Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by munk-a on Thursday August 06, 2020 @06:32PM (#24076133)
The US has never been a free-market and, honestly, the vitriol that folks use when talking about socialism has just hurt efforts to apply sane regulations that would help stabilize the market.

The US still uses SSNs for everything because everyone is too afraid of government identification to pursue a more sane approach, the result is a government issued identification that is poorly designed for what it's used for and extremely insecure. The same thing happens with our economy, instead of taking sane measure to fight against the penultimate death of capitalism (the slide into oligopolies) the vitriol against any form of government intervention has placed us in a situation where heavy handed government intervention is regularly required - we're avoiding a soft form of socialism and ending up with having to intervene like a planned economy about once every decade.

I really hope this can be solved by some smart people without trying to enlist wide-spread political support since I don't think that support is ever going to materialize.

Re:Busted retailers use bankruptcy to break leases by the th... by throwaway0a5e on Thursday August 06, 2020 @06:45PM (#24076221)
>The US has never been a free-market

Pretty much every market in the US has been insanely free, like "just don't kill people quickly and we don't care" free at some point. They all stopped being free when they got big. Then government got involved and regulation, regulatory capture and whatnot happened (I'm intentionally glossing over the details because they vary by industry and I don't want to pass judgement).